Assignments for October 30, 2007

Hello Families!

Can you believe we are a quarter of the way through our school year? We had a great day yesterday. I hope some of you received your "stained glass" art in a decent state. Ask your children why we produced these in conjunction with our literature work, Adam of the Road. Also we worked on a Venn diagram comparing the friendship between Adam and Perkin and the Biblical one between David and Jonathan. I think it was a great exercise and your kids jumped right in and amazed me as usual.

I enjoyed perusing the notebooks this week. I hope they all landed back in your possession in good order. My front room was overtaken by them this week! I put a note in the front of each one with my thoughts and what I hope is an encouragement to the students as we press on into the next quarter.

New Procedure: I would like to try a different approach with your child's work this quarter. My plan is to have two file boxes available in the hall when your children arrive at school. They will each have a file folder with your student's name. One will be to turn in the assignments completed during the previous week. The other will be to pick up the graded assignments that were turned in the week before. Make sense?

The two-fold reason for this change is I can keep abreast of the student's progress and come along side if I see anyone falling behind, etc. Also, my living room won't be overtaken by notebooks at the end of this next quarter!!!

In a normal week the assignments I would like to be turned into me will be: history narrations, mapwork, color pages, literature homework pages, science narrations, and grammar vocabulary work (definitions and sentences). I plan to check science spirals during class to see if vocabulary is being kept up to date there.

Big News: Next week, at 1:00, Ayla's mom, Mrs. McBreen will join our class for a workshop. She will be teaching us to make lapbooks. These are incredible tools for learning that children love. Ayla shared one of hers yesterday and every one was "hooked". We will be working on one about the sea turtles we are studying in science.
If possible, I would love to have you parents present to learn and help your students. Mrs. McBreen is bringing all the supplies we will need. I'm asking that each student contribute $2 or $3 dollars to offset her expenses. These are fun and appealing and the kids get excited about producing them and learning the subject area. Please try to join us next week at 1:00. (These may get to take the place of the "less exciting" science narrations and science spirals!)

Note: I tried to take up the homework from last week. We had a bit of chaos toward the end of the day as we tried to squeeze in a visit to the book fair. If I did not get your child's work from last week (Minstrel word search, grammar and vocab from ch. 6, and science narration on pgs. 47-53), have them turn it in next week with this weeks assignments which I'm finally getting to!!!

History:
--produce a narration of what you've learned in class and in reading ch. 13 in SOTW
--complete mapwork pg. 51
--complete color pages 53 & 54
--read ch. 14 in SOTW

Literature:
-- there are two vocabulary words per chapter that I want you to look up and define in the packet I sent home. Read through and familiarize yourself with all the words in the packet.
--begin memorizing Roger's thoughts about a road on pg. 53 2nd paragraph. The Classical model encourages memorization and recitation. Maybe I will have some volunteers to recite at the Medieval feast?!?
--read through chapter 10 Here, Nick!

Grammar
--review, then administer test for ch. 6
--complete ch 7 from teaching text
--have ch. 7's vocab done and ready to turn in next week
--we switched grammar time with history time and were a little fresher and alert. We discussed subject pronouns, understood subject pronouns, and possessive pronouns. Hope that it helps!

Science
--read pg. 55 through the top of pg. 61
--produce a narration (to be turned in) about what you learned in this reading assignment
--enter herps, ectothermic, oviparous, brumation, carapace, plastron in your science spirals

I truly love your children. Have a great week with them.